An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

principles to judge the validity and usefulness of qualitative date in terms of whether theaccounts from the respondents fit the information from the literature on the churchdoctrine. The principles are:i) to assume initially that no one is lyingii) in choosing between the individual story and the official version it is most likely that theinstitution is not being totally honestiii) whatever people tell you makes sense to them as it is part of their life experiences, realor imagined.iv) all the information gathered from people‟s account is relevant if it is within the domainof the research topic.v) there is no such thing as absolute truth.One issue of truth here is about whether the respondents really understand the doctrine andpractices of their church, and want to give the researcher the information that they think theresearcher is looking for, or whether they feel it is important that they protect the church asan organization and others in the organization especially those in senior positions by nottelling the whole story. Their individual experiences of spiritual healing may be real tothem as this is part of their life experiences and their accounts are therefore reliablealthough they may not be valid as quantitative data about clinical health outcomes. It couldbe argued, however, that if the information from the interviews and observation is reliableis it also valid in as much as ethnographic and qualitative data can be reliable and valid atthe time given the social setting that prevails at that time in history.79